The Opinion Blog

Race for the Future

My latest column considers why U.S. Rep. Henry Brown has drawn such a crowded field of challengers.

The last few weeks have seen a flurry of campaign activity around U.S. Rep. Henry Brown's first district congressional seat, which covers all of Horry County and coastal Georgetown County and stretches down into Charleston.

Former Mount Pleasant Town Council member Mark Fava last week became the latest Republican to mount a primary challenge against Brown, joining governor's-son challenger Carroll "Tumpy" Campbell III, Isle of Palms councilman Ryan Buckhannon and perennial challenger Katherine Jenerette of North Myrtle Beach. At the same time, Dick Withington of Pawleys Island announced his Democratic candidacy, joining retired Air Force Col. Robert Burton and Georgetown-area businessman Robert Dobbs in vying for that nomination.

Four Republican challengers and three Democrats, long before filing, with other names still in the rumor mill. Now in his fifth term, what has Brown done to deserve such a crowded path to re-election?

Better Living Through Chemistry

Thursday’s editorial praises U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s compromise proposal on climate-change and energy-independence legislation.

Three years ago, when U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham announced his support for a bipartisan immigration compromise to increase border security, reform the visa system and crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, hard-core immigration opponents seized on the bill's path to citizenship for undocumented workers already in the U.S. as “amnesty” and managed to derail the entire effort.

Undaunted, Graham has returned to the fray, announcing this month his support for a “tripartisan” energy reform framework with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). The framework has two broad arms – curbing carbon pollution while creating new energy sources – that should provide a pathway to compromise.

Trying to be Distinguished

The powers-that-be have (in perhaps an overt act of desperation) allowed me to begin writing a periodic political column. In the course of any given week, I attend a number of events and conduct a number of interviews that never make it into “official” editorials, simply because they don’t warrant the newspaper’s taking an “official” position on them. But they still represent other people’s legitimate opinions, so I hope a column might give them some audience – after all, that’s why they call and invite me.

My column won’t have a regular run date; it’ll be kind of catch-as-catch can, which somewhat reflects the state of the industry these days. It’ll be more observational than ideological, and I hope it’s better than nothing.

It was a rule begging to be broken: each office-seeking Democrat had four minutes to explain to a crowded Pawleys Island living room why he should be the next governor of South Carolina.

I wasn't keeping time, so I don't know if anyone actually kept it to four minutes – but it was striking how quickly contrasts emerged between the four candidates for the Democratic nomination. Unlike the top-heavy Republican field (which includes two statewide officers and a Congressman), most of the Democrats are new names for most S.C. voters, giving them the added hurdle of forging an identity as they pitch their ideas.

RINO

    I'm a RINO.  I've been a Republican since I registered to vote, just in time to vote for Reagan.  On most Republican issues, I'm fairly reliable, because they're positions I've thought about and agree with.  Some issues I've also thought about and come out at variance with the party platform.  I've never understood, for example, how conservation became an automatic liberal Democrat issue, or how Christianity, with its focus on egalitarianism and love of neighbor and enemy, became co-opted by Republicans.  I've got a friend in California who's a Democrat.  When we have our customarily involved and interesting conversations, our areas of agreement are much broader than the places we disagree.  I'd note that in San Diego, he's widely thought of as a wild eyed right-winger, despite the D on his voting card, whereas when he lived in Colorado Springs, he was thought of as the wild eyed liberal.  I suppose that may mean he's a DINO.

Georgetown: A Fresh Start

Friday’s editorial issues recommendations in the Georgetown city council and mayor’s races.

Despite divergent political backgrounds of the five announced candidates for mayor of Georgetown, they share an impression of a city government that has grown oversized, inefficient and unfriendly to customers. Yet among all the candidates is genuine hope things will soon be much better.

Not Across the Board

Wednesday’s editorial argues that Congress should send an extra Social Security check to the people who depend on it the most, but not to all recipients.

It's now official although by no means unexpected: There will be no automatic cost of living increase for Grand Strand seniors receiving Social Security and other federal retirement payments. To ease the impact a bit, President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders propose $250 payments to 57 million Americans. This would be a second $250 payment, the first coming earlier this year as part of the economic stimulus package.

The health bill the President will sign?

I don't normally do this, but I'm going to post the entirety of an item from Congressional Quarterly. So if you read what's below, give a courtesy click to http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003201570 so that neither you nor The Opinion Blog is stealing.

Senate Finance Committee negotiators neared completion Monday of a health care bill that would cost an estimated $880 billion over 10 years and include language aimed at reducing medical liability lawsuits.

The cost of the bill, newly estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, would be fully offset by spending cuts or new revenues, said Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “In fact, we’re a little bit to the good.”

The six negotiators — three Democrats and three Republicans — were expected to meet again later in the day, Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said, and remain on track to produce a draft bill by the end of the week. Baucus also planned an evening meeting with other Finance Committee Democrats to bring them up to date on the talks.

The six negotiators plan to talk Tuesday with state governors to discuss how much of the cost of a Medicaid expansion the states would be required to pay.

Baucus said the bill’s programs “are not going to cost states as much as originally feared.” The lower costs, which Baucus has not detailed, result from changes to the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid drug rebates.

Conrad said the draft bill would enable states to run demonstration projects with federal support to reduce medical liability lawsuits. One proposal is to require lawsuits to have a “certificate of merit” from experts before they can proceed.

The significance of this is that it's the first health-reform bill to emerge with significant political traction that the nonpartisan CBO has judged won't add to the deficit (other than the sadly neglected Wyden-Bennett bill, of course), thus fulfilling a major pledge Obama made in his speech. Before you jump down the CBO's throat, remember that this is the same agency that scored the Senate Health and House bills as costing well over $1 trillion, dealing them major blows.

What is the Senate Finance bill? It's basically what Obama outlined in his speech, minus the public option. It's got all the reforms to the insurance industry that end exclusions for people with pre-existing conditions and so forth. It has a mandate that all Americans buy insurance. It creates co-operatives so people without employer-sponsored insurance can band together and bargain for lower premiums from insurers. It gives subsidies to poor Americans so they can buy private insurance. I believe it'll have a handful of Republican ideas, such as the cost-controlling Medicare advisory committees and malpractice reform experiments. And in recent days, they've stripped out benefits for end-of-life counseling (ie "death panels") and hardened citizenship requirements for subsidies (thank Joe Wilson). (More complete summary here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/09/baucuss_framework_summary.html)

And, with the blessing now of the CBO, it's likely to pass, and the President will likely sign it. The CBO's report doesn't seem to have been made public yet; I assume it'll be released after the official unveiling of the Senate Finance bill on Wednesday.

Your thoughts?

Patriotism or Partisanship?

Friday's editorial suggests that right-wing strategists let legitimate concerns about health reform go to their head and thus overreached politically with their ill-advised furor to the president's speech to students.

Last week, President Obama announced that he would be giving a speech to schoolchildren encouraging them to stay in school.

So, in an stunningly equal-but-opposite response, his most ardent detractors immediately proclaimed their intent to pull their kids out.

Speak up, Sen. Graham

Saturday's editorial encourages U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham to be a more forceful advocate for the health-care reforms he advocates.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham may be among the most sensible voices today in the nation's out-of-control health care debate - so it's too bad he's speaking so quietly.

Dr. DeMint's Sugar Pill, Part 2: Unfunded, inadequate and unambitious

Sunday's editorial adds practical criticisms to Saturday's conceptual critique of U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint's "Health Care Freedom Plan:"

As we explained Saturday, the most serious weakness of Sen. Jim DeMint's "Health Care Freedom Plan" is its lack of strong mechanisms to control out-of-control medical inflation. But within the plan itself, specific elements also have deficiencies of their own.